by Jules Barker
“Can you meet me there?” Mrs. Graham asked.
“Of course. Right away.” Laurel hung up, but stared at her phone. Donni was missing.
There’d been no sign of him since two am, and the police were already searching the island but having no luck. Laurel bit her lip. Mr. Shaw wouldn’t want her there, but Mrs. Graham hoped she could get Laurel inside the house to do a reading. The thought of facing Mr. Shaw in an even more agitated state made her stomach tense. It didn’t matter, though. She had to go. She had to try.
An ocean breeze stirred her skirts and she looked up over the town towards Pastries and Potions where Nate would be waiting. She’d have to cancel on Nate at the worst moment. Or… maybe she didn’t have to do this alone. Whether he was just a friend or something more, he’d always been there for her. Last night and even the swing this morning only reminded her of that. She could include him in this without any fear that he’d abandon her. And if they had to wait to define their relationship until later, well, Laurel would have to hope she could stay brave enough to tell him how she felt.
Nate picked up on the first ring. “You’re not backing out on me now, are you Lars?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“I need your help.”
Nate was by her side in less than five minutes, loading her bike into the back of his truck. They jumped in and slammed the doors as they took off to the address Laurel gave him.
“So he disappeared sometime last night––why are they calling in you and Mrs. Graham? Don’t they have the police on it?”
Laurel wound the strings of her purse around her fingers. “The police are already searching. But Mr. Shaw called Mrs. Graham, too. Since she was Donni’s teacher, he thought she could have some idea about what Donni might be thinking. I think he’s desperate. If I’m honest, I’m not looking forward to dealing with him in that state.”
“I’ll be there right beside you, Laurel. If it comes down to it, you do your thing and I’ll make sure he stays out of your way.” Nate’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel.
Laurel’s heart gave a little flip. Whether Nate was by her side as a lover or a family friend, she was glad to have him there. She just wished she knew which one he was.
“Mr. Shaw is out of options,” she said. “Mrs. Graham plans to tell him I’m really good with kids, like a consultant to the school or something, and that I seemed to have a good read on Donni. She thinks she might be able to convince him to let me in and that I might be able to get a better idea of any plans Donni had.”
Within another minute, Nate was turning into the gravel drive of a four-plex apartment. An empty police car was parked out front and Mrs. Graham stood by a red Nissan in activewear, looking like she came straight from a Saturday morning workout. She met Laurel at the door of the truck.
“I’m sorry, Laurel. Mark, Donni’s dad, is very upset. He’s got a hangover and is on edge. I don’t think he’ll let you in.” Concern etched her face as she folded her arms around her middle.
“The police are with him?” Laurel confirmed, as Nate rounded the truck to stand beside her.
“Yes. One officer is with him now in case Donni shows up or makes contact, and a bolo for the department. It’s pretty clear Donni ran away, so they’re searching the island. They’ve already checked the parks, the cemetery, the local kid hangouts and with his friends. If they don’t find him soon, I think they’ll send people up the trails in the mountain. If only you could help. We’ll just have to wait until things calm down.”
“Who’s the officer inside?”
“Officer Westergard. Why?”
Hmmm. Laurel didn’t know him well, but he’d seemed nice the one or two times she’d seen him around.
“Bottom left apartment you said?”
“Yes… Why?”
Laurel didn’t answer. Mrs. Graham may have given up on getting Laurel inside to help, but Laurel knew she could make a difference. They didn’t listen to her before, and perhaps that was partly because she didn’t make them take her seriously. But not today. Today she’d do it all. Today she was determined to get Nate to see her as a potential girlfriend, and more urgently, she was determined to get Mark Shaw and Sheila Graham and Officer Westergard to take her seriously.
Without answering, she marched down the walkway and opened the door to the apartment after rapping twice. The front room was shabby and unkempt, but Laurel could tell it had been arranged with care.
Mark Shaw sat in a brown armchair, leaning forward with his head between his hands. He looked up as Laurel stepped toward him. Officer Westergard stood near the front window checking something he held in his hand. He looked up at her curiously, but didn’t intervene.
Laurel took care to stand in the middle of the room, touching nothing. Surges from Mr. Shaw would not help her right now. “Hi, Mr. Shaw. Mrs. Graham called––”
Mr. Shaw growled from his chair, interrupting. “I told that teacher I didn’t want––”
Laurel cut him off. “Mr. Shaw. No disrespect but it doesn’t matter what you don’t want. What you do want right now more than anything is to get Donni back, and I can help you. No––” she threw up a hand and took a step toward him when he opened his mouth to cut her off. Nate stood at her back. “No more letting your pride get in the way of getting help for you or your son. There’s no shame in needing help, Mr. Shaw. Especially not after losing a family member.”
Mr. Shaw’s lips trembled before he bit them and clenched his jaw. A nerve near his eye twitched, but he said nothing. Officer Westergard merely observed the conversation with interest.
Laurel softened her tone. “I know about loss, Mr. Shaw. I lost both of my parents when I was a teenager. I know a little bit of what Donni is going through, but I can only imagine what it’s like for you, losing your wife and trying to hold everything together. It’s not wrong to struggle. But it is wrong to make your son suffer because you’re too proud to get help.”
Mr. Shaw stood. “Donni is not suffering. We are just fine.” He squared his shoulders in challenge, then stepped around them toward the kitchen at the back of the apartment.
Nate placed his hand on the small of Laurel’s back, but said nothing, letting her handle this her own way. She let the words pour out.
“You can’t see through your own pain enough to know that Donni is hurting. It goes beyond losing his mom. She may be the one who died but Donni’s lost both of his parents to this tragedy. And what’s more, if you don’t see and acknowledge that Donni has his own grief to deal with also, then you’re hurting him even more by making him bear it alone. Neither of you can handle it alone, but if you shared it, the grief would be less, not more.”
Mr. Shaw paused, and now leaned one hand against the wall, his back still to her. Laurel took a breath to make her last push.
“You’ve got to open up to your son, Mr. Shaw. If you don’t use this tragedy to bring you closer together, then you’re going to get further apart. You’re going to lose him, too.” Laurel gestured at the empty apartment. “It’s already happening.”
Mark Shaw turned to glare at her, but then his eyes travelled to the threadbare carpet and the worn sofa and the broken tv stand. Looking at the room without Donni. He slumped against the wall and covered his eyes with one work-worn hand. “Fine,” he said after breathing shallowly for a moment. “Do whatever it is you think you can do.”
Mrs. Graham spoke up from near the door. She must have followed Laurel in. “Ms. Penwythe is excellent at child psychology. If you let her look at Donni’s room, she may be able to discern his plans.”
“Fine. Do it.” His voice was tight, and wobbly.
Laurel could practically feel the emotion pouring off of him as it was absorbed and reflected by the objects around him. The sooner she left this room, the better. She looked at Officer Westergard. “I’m going to go back to Donni’s room. Is that okay?”
He nodded. “We’ve searched it already and it’s
not a crime scene. You’re free to look.”
Laurel walked the short hallway Mr. Shaw had gestured down until she saw a room that had to be Donni’s. Emotion nearly overwhelmed her, but Nate slid his hand into hers and squeezed it gently. She looked at him over her shoulder and smiled gratefully.
Donni’s room was small, clothes and toys wedged between and around the few pieces of furniture: a bed, a dresser, a child’s table in the corner covered with half-built construction toys. Laurel braced herself for surges, then reached out tentative fingers, letting them softly skim the surface of the items in his room. She didn’t have time nor energy to read everything, but a surge or a strong first layer could tell her what was worth more investigating. Most everything had outer layers of loneliness, anger, and sadness.
As her fingers skimmed a framed photo on Donni’s dresser, she paused. It was a picture of Donni and a woman, certainly his mother, smiling into the camera. Her arm was thrown around his shoulders pulling him in close as she held the camera in her other for the selfie. Laurel expected only grief from the photo, but she didn’t have to dive far into the emotional energy to feel an odd swell of determination and hope. Why would this photo have recent positive feelings attached to it?
Laurel continued around the room. Nate leaned against the doorway, arms folded, staying out of her way but watching her closely.
Laurel was most of the way around the room and hadn’t found anything particularly useful. Not in the pile of clothes at the foot of his bed. Not in his dresser drawers or the closet full of toys. Nothing under his bed but old Halloween candy and a coloring book. Nothing that had emotional resonance she could use. Her anxiousness to help ratcheted up a notch.
“Can I help somehow, Lars?” Nate asked as she leaned back on her haunches after rifling through a pile of clothes and toys wedged between the dresser and the bed
“No.” She sighed, standing. “I can’t think of where else—” She stopped. A surge washed into her, a wave of ocean and determination. She closed her eyes, feeling for where it was coming from. There, under the foot of the bed, was a heating vent.
She dropped to her knees and tried to reach for it, but it was too far under. She could shimmy under the bed in her dress but… She cast a glance at Nate and he was on his stomach reaching with his long arms without her having to ask. He pried the already loosened cover from the vent and pulled out a notebook, sliding back and handing it to Laurel.
It was a bright orange spiral-bound notebook like any school-child could have. She opened it to flip through the pages, but they were blank. It was empty. Frills of paper still caught in the binding showed that pages had been ripped out recently, Laurel guessed. She traced the grooves left in the top page by the pen pressing too hard on the pages before. It looked like a drawing of some sort, but she couldn’t tell.
“I’ll have to read its energy,” she said.
“Here. Let’s sit down first.” Nate sat beside her on the bed, worry still etching his brow.
Laurel centered herself, reeling in her anxious energy and focusing on her heart. She sent her awareness down her arms and hand and into the notebook. It was like diving into crystal clear water, bracing but not cold. Energizing. It was a pool of clear resolve. Light danced around her as bubbles of hope swirled, pushed by eddies of longing. Donni had been making a choice that brought him hope, a choice based on longing and that he was determined to follow through with. But what?
Laurel focused with her other senses, moving through the layers of recent memory, listening and looking for more tangible evidence. A laugh rippled through the water of emotion, the same laugh she’d heard when holding the picture of Donni and his mom. She saw a flash of blue, a cerulean sky streaked with a multi-colored kite darting through it. And she heard it, a faint echo.
I wish I were there. I wish I were there.
Wherever this was, it was where Donni had run to.
She resurfaced and her excitement must have shone because Nate responded, “Did you figure it out?”
“I think so!” Laurel grabbed his hand and hauled him out of the room, grabbing the photo from the dresser as she passed.
Mrs. Graham was with Officer Westergard in the front room, but Laurel found Donni’s dad in the kitchen, staring at a bowl of cereal and a gallon of milk as if he’d forgotten how to get the one into the other.
“Mr. Shaw!” she said, startling him. She toned it down. “Mr. Shaw. I think Donni is trying to go where his mom went.”
The blood drained from Mr. Shaw’s face and she realized her words could mean Donni was trying to be with his mother in death. “Oh! No, not like that. Sorry. I think he’s trying to go somewhere he feels close to her.”
“The officers already thought to check the cemetery but we didn’t bury her on the island. She’s on the mainland by her parents.”
“He can’t visit her there, no. But maybe––”
“I already told the police about all the places he might hide. Where his friends live. He wasn’t there.” Mr. Shaw leaned on the counter and rubbed his face with both hands in exhaustion. “I can’t think of anywhere else he’d go. I––I haven’t been around because of work and… I just don’t know.”
Laurel’s heart twinged. Mark Shaw wasn’t a terrible dad; he was dealing with terrible circumstances and not handling it the best. But he ached for Donni. It was in every line of his face. She stepped forward.
“Mr. Shaw. What about kites? I think Donni went to a place he had picnics with his mom. A place they flew kites. Where would that be?”
Mr. Shaw’s eyes flew up to search her face. “I know she liked to take him out exploring a lot. I didn’t get to go with them, but they had a few places they went. I just have to remember…”
Laurel thought of her readings. There was a strong sense of the ocean attached to Donni’s recent memories of his mom. It wasn’t just that emotion was like water; it was more specific than that.
“What about Athame’s Garden?” She asked, thinking of the small island in the bay. “It’s on the ocean. It’s a stretch, but did they ever maybe kayak out there? Have picnics and fly kites?”
Mr. Shaw stared at the counter, then slowly turned to her. “Yeah, actually. That last summer Allison bought two kayaks and they went out together a lot.”
“And does Donni have access to those kayaks?”
Mr. Shaw didn’t answer. Instead he bolted out the front door, Laurel, Nate, Officer Westergard, and Mrs. Graham trailing behind him. He ran to a large shed in the back of the property and rummaged around between it and the fence.
“It’s gone. Donni’s kayak isn’t there! The bike trailer is gone, too,” he said.
Laurel turned to the Officer. “I think Donni took his mom’s kayak out to Athame’s Garden.”
Officer Westergard only hesitated a moment, as if deciding to trust the basis of her information, before jumping on his radio and calling it in.
Laurel pulled Nate aside. “I’ve got to go with them on the police boat.”
“Why? You can’t read natural objects, right? You wouldn’t be able to sniff out his trail.”
“No, but if they find anything of his, I could read that.”
“Gotcha. I’m an idiot.” He paused, looking her over a moment. “I wish it were colder outside so I could at least offer you my jacket or something. I feel useless.” He shrugged.
A grin stole over Laurel’s face. “Knowing you’re here is still helpful. Friends have to have each other’s backs, right?”
He took a step back, looking serious. “We still need to talk about that. But later, obviously.”
Laurel bit her lip and nodded. Did he not even want to remain friends? No, that couldn’t be what he meant. She hadn’t even confessed her feelings yet. Well, today was a day for bravery. First Donni. Then Nate. One problem at a time.
She looked over at the other three adults heading to the front of the apartment. “Now I’ve got to convince the police to let me go with them.”
22
Hide-and-Seek
Once they knew where to look, everything moved forward rapidly. Officer Westergard arranged official transport, convinced Mr. Shaw to stay put in case they were wrong and Donni showed up at home, and got approval from Chief Bellin to let Laurel ride along based on her unique skill set.
As they sped across the water, Laurel eyed their destination. Athame’s Garden was a teardrop shaped island in the middle of the bay that was preserved as a historic site. It had one small stretch of pebbled beach with a dock and outhouse maintained by the town. The rest of the island perimeter was sharp, rocky drops to the ocean. The north end where the small island was narrowest housed the historic cemetery from the town’s first settling days. The rest was wild vegetation and a path that ran a loop around the edge and then cut through the middle so visitors could access the central hill. The beach was currently empty of people, although those playing in the bay might come over to see what the police were doing on the small island.
Mr. Shaw had told them his wife had been adamant about water safety and trained Donni well before letting him have a child-size kayak of his own. The knots in Laurel’s stomach had eased slightly. If Donni had paddled over in the early morning, he probably would have made it.
After Officer Westergard helped Laurel out of the boat, he remained behind to consult with his partner. Laurel wrapped her skirt tighter around her legs as she walked down the dock, cursing the ever-present ocean breeze. She picked her way over the pebbled beach, looking about for any clues that Donni had arrived on the small island.
“There! Behind that boulder, there’s a blue kayak!” Officer Westergard shouted from the dock.
Laurel couldn’t see it from her vantage point, but as she hurried in the direction he pointed, she saw it. ‘A. Shaw’ and a phone number were written on the back. This had belonged to Donni’s mom!
Laurel reached out and slid into its emotions. Donni had been excited for the adventure when he paddled over, but it was also mingled with apprehension and a strong undercurrent of bitterness. And exhaustion.